Check out my other blog http://pamelaspirowagner.com for more information on my life with schizophrenia

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Who Knew, Who knew?

This blog entry is dated, obviously but is rather prescient as well, so I will include it, though it may have little to do with schizophrenia in the end.

TITLE: Bits and PiecesDATE: 12/26/2003 06:18:34 PM

I am stuck in my writing of SOLO FOR TWO ( "DIVIDED MINDS"), mostly because it seems so disorganized and lacking in any coherent structure. Partly this is due to our not being able to coordinate our different parts of the story so far, and having no editorial input, despite our editor at St Martin’s, D, and her promise to stay in close contact with us as we continued to finish the book. In fact, we never heard from her after the first chapter, which she liked but never returned or edited, and it has been almost a year since then. Does this have to do with the fact that she moved to the west coast? I have not had a good experience with editors who come from CA, and I fear that D, now living in Oregon, may have been infected by CA’s sun-dazed, surf’s up, lackadaisical attitudes! (No offense to CA dwellers, I am only jesting and truly love my Left Coast friends, one and all.)

Lynnie plans to visit after Christmas, during which time we may do an interview/profile for Psychology Today, which is putting together an issue on “nature versus nurture” and has expressed an interest in being “flies on the wall” during our next working get-together.

Everybody is celebrating the capture of Saddam Hussein, the worst despot of the second half of the 20th century. And we’re all congratulating ourselves, as if we weren’t ourselves guilty not only for supporting his murderous campaigns for years or at least closing our eyes to those we might not want to see, but actually supplying him with ALL the biological and chemical weapons and nuclear components which we have accused him of developing into WMD. What a load of hooey! As far as I’m concerned, we are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. It makes me sick to hear how wonderful we are for capturing this monster, and nothing at all about our deep complicity in his crimes, nothing about our complete abstention from objecting when Iranians or Kurds were gassed with our chemicals or Iraqis who dissented were disappeared. What did we care, so long as our oil supply lines went on flowing uninterrupted? Oh, I could go on and on, being the lefty that I proudly am, but I suppose my political passions have no place in a blog concerned with the writing of a book on mental illness. But if anything makes me ill, mentally sick at heart, it is this sort of self-congratulatory amnesia and/or ignorance. That is all I’m going to say about it for now, otherwise I’d start in on Walmart.

Except that I'm going to append a short lefty political poem I just wrote...Hah!

TO OUR WARLORD

By Pamela Spiro Wagner

Your father, George W, said he stood forAll those 1000s of pinpoints of lightAs his son you incessantly prosecute warDo you think that your star shines so bright?

If you wanted, George Junior, to do anythingYou *could* end world famine and hungerYet the rich you make richer than Croesus the kingAnd the poor will not take it much longer

Your invading campaigns haven’t made Iraq healthyTo the Afgans you’ve only brought griefYou’ve stolen from poor peoples, made your friends wealthySir, to us, you behave like a thief

You’re the president, George, though you weren’t a fair winnerYou’ve said you’re a good man and trueYou claim you’ve reformed and no longer a sinnerBut what when the war bill comes due?

The people, George, know that you’re *not* a good man,that the White House deserves a new resident,So in next year’s elections we’ll do all we canTo select someone else as our President.

About Me

I have both schizophrenia and Lyme disease. Now the author of WE MAD CLIMB SHAKY LADDERS: Poetry, (CavanKerry Press, 2009), (my third book is LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS, not yet published) I won First Place in the 2001/2 international BBC World Service Radio Poetry Competition. In 2005, I co-authored, with my twin sister, a psychiatrist, DIVIDED MINDS: Twin Sisters and their Journey through Schizophrenia (St Martin’s Press), which in 2006 won the national NAMI Outstanding Literature Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award. I am also an artist, whose work is displayed here and elsewhere, right now, best viewed at my Flickr site or at my wordpress blog, pamelaspirowagner.com.
In this blog I hope to recreate my old schizophrenia.com "wagblog," which was lost when that website temporarily deconstructed. It can't be done perfectly but we'll see what is possible.
Schizophrenia for me has been a journey that was not expected to end well but my continuing life has validated all the shreds of hope anyone ever held out for a drowning swimmer. It has especially validated my hanging on when it felt like there was nothing left to hang on for.